Maker to unveil world's largest OLED TV

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A LG spokeswoman shows the width of the world's largest OLED TV with a display size of 55 inches.

Story highlights

LG says TV screen's color is especially vibrant because of its four-color pixels

Until now, it's been difficult to create OLED screens this big at a reasonable cost

LG invested $226 million in mid-2010 to create a new production facility

Korean electronics company LG caused a worldwide stir when it announced its 55-inch OLED panel last week, and now the company has rolled out two more pictures that show you what kind of remarkable TV set this is going to be.

How groundbreaking is this TV, anyway? If you've ever seen an OLED screen, all of which are much smaller than this one, you'll know how outlandishly vibrant its colors are. And an OLED screen can be impossibly thin.

For instance, the one you see here is only 4mm thick -- take a look at the right side of the picture and you'll see the woman's finger pointing at the edge of the screen.

On its official LG UK Blog, LG says this screen's color is even more vibrant because of its four-color pixels, making its picture more natural and accurate than other OLEDs. Each tiny pixel emits red, green, blue and white, instead of the red/green/blue used in the pixels of other OLED sets and most other TV sets manufactured today.

Does that make a noticeable difference? We'll take a close look at this screen and others like it at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week and give you our first-hand impressions.

The OLED screen (organic light-emitting diode, read more about OLED technology here) is nothing new, but here's the innovation: Until now, it's been difficult to create the screens in a size this big, at a reasonable cost and with a long-enough lifespan. The problem with this announcement is, LG is not saying when this screen will be available, how much it will cost, or how long it will last.

So will this be yet another spectacular CES demo of a product that will never make it into the homes of real-world consumers?

From what we've seen, LG is serious about its OLED manufacturing, where it invested $226 million in mid-2010 to create a new production facility, tripling its OLED capacity. Many other manufacturers are whispering about OLED screens. There are already smaller OLED screens available now, albeit at exorbitant prices. There are small OLED screens on millions of smartphones. This is not science fiction, folks.

The promising fact: huge OLED screens can be printed onto razor-thin surfaces using a process akin to an inkjet printer, theoretically making them even cheaper to produce than today's LCD and plasma screens.

And the screens have much faster response time, with refresh rates that could (again, theoretically) reach 100,000 Hz. They're brighter, lighter (this 55-inch screen weighs 16.5 lb), and can even be flexible.

No question about it: You're looking at the TV the future, and the question is not if we'll see these screens available in large sizes and affordable prices, but when.